With my wife taking up part-time residence in her new vicarage, there came my long-awaited chance to cart all her ‘Religion Books’ (8 boxfuls) out to the said premises. These found a new home on the official allowance of 30 metres of shelving, which they have almost filled. Subsequently, my own books and those belonging to the rest of the family have expanded into the space vacated by the above. So, for the time being at least, gone are the piles of books on the floor in corners of rooms and along corridors, and on windowsills around the place.
As I rearranged the hardback or paperback novels according to author, and all the other categories of printed work, I took to wondering how many we still have at home, and added them up … ever the retired Quantity Surveyor! When I confess to the rough total (I’m sure there are some lurking unfound or unnoticed) I am aware that to some readers this may seem boastful, in which case I apologise. However, I am sure that to far more of you the total will seem a mere nothing. Ranging across nine categories of my making there are about 1800 books. (I counted 1715 to be precise!). To set this in context (and I do find this suitably humbling), I heard a recent radio interviewee refer to his own collection of at least 10,000.
Reflecting on our 115 or so cookery books, I am reminded of a cartoon in a recent edition of Private Eye, in which two figures stand beside shelves straining under a mass of such books, one character saying to the other ‘Shall we just have beans on toast?’ Similarly, reflecting upon the 375 novels in groups by specific authors, or the 850 books by random authors or on general topics, I wonder how many will be read for a second time? I even have a shelf on which there are 24 books (4 on loan) which I have still to read for the first!
Recent statistics suggest that annually twice as many new titles were published in the UK per million inhabitants than in any other country in mainland Europe, an incredible total of 206,000 in the year in question. Of these last 10,000 were for children. By far the majority of all new output was published on paper, between covers, obtainable in your bookshop.
So why so many bound books already in my own house, and why are so many new books published this way each year? Presumably because so many people, myself included, prefer and ultimately treasure the ‘hard copy’ books they own and can keep on a shelf (or, if necessary, on the floor or on the windowsill!). Books which are all text, stored electronically (on ‘kindle’ for example) can be read conveniently on buses, planes and trains. Personally, I much prefer a paper copy, even when in transit. And what of picture books? Our collection numbers 93 such volumes, mostly mine; pictures of Victorian London, pictorial accounts of WW1, histories of the Royal Flying Corps and RAF, A3 representations of the art of Caravaggio and so on. I challenge anybody to browse effectively and appreciate a book of over three hundred A3 photographs by moving picture to picture on a computer screen. Try taking that to the pub to share with a friend!
Some years ago, a number of us were fortunate enough, and wise enough I think, to fight off attempts to publish Sofia primarily in electronic form. Whilst a paper copy is more expensive for the Network, through the costs of its production and distribution, it stands as concrete evidence of the health and strength of the Network in a way in which a reference to electronic copy may struggle to. Back-numbers can be amassed in folders on shelves at home and, more importantly perhaps, can easily be given to friends and left in libraries and the like. Though we inhabit an increasingly electronic age, Sofia and the ideas embodied in its articles are best presented, I feel, in paper form.
John Pearson was Subject Director, Quantity Surveying, at the University of Northumbria. He is Chair of SOF Trustees.